Sunday, May 3, 2009

Charlie Christian- Live At Mintons

Why can't the mayor's office understand that every creative movement in New York City of the 20th Century, from jazz to abstract expressionism to punk rock started in bars and after hours joints. We need such places. Nowadays, the city loves to harass and bust bars and clubs--for noise tickets, sending in undercover cops to try and bust a place for serving minors (God forbid a twenty year old has a beer), no smoking laws, etc. Fuckin' idiot politicians...sorry, I'm way off the track already. The subject I'm trying to get to being one of my very favorite records-- Charlie Christian Live At Minton's, which captures the great jazz guitarist Charlie Christian in late night jams where he gets a chance to stretch out in a way he never could in any of the configurations of Benny Goodman's bands that he played with.
If you're not familiar with the name, Charlie Christian was one of the very first electric guitar players, he came out of Oklahoma, discovered by John Hammond who brought him to the attention of Benny Goodman who hired him, bringing him to fame at a young age.
I know he was an excellent musician, but I've never liked Benny Goodman's playing. There's something about his tone that sounds to me like he's trying to squeeze a dime between his ass cheeks. Sadly, Christian contracted tuberculosis and died at age 24 (March 2, 1942) so most of his short recording career was spent with Benny Goodman playing in his big and small bands.
It was these Goodman groups that the majority of Christian's legitimate recordings are recorded with.
Mintons was an afterhours club at 220 W. 118th Street in Harlem where musicians came to jam with the house band which was Kenny Clarke on drums, Nick Fenton on bass, Thelonious Monk on piano and Joe Guy on trumpet. If a crummy player got onstage they'd play at ridiculously fast tempos or in difficult keys to clear the air, this left more time for the best players of the era to work out their ideas in public. Charlie Christian played there so often he kept an extra amp at the place. Over a few nights in early May of 1941 a guy named Joe Newman brought a recording machine in and recorded Charlie Christian in these late night jam sessions.
They were recorded direct to acetate and these discs ended up with John Hammond whose wife sold them in 1974, five tracks would appeared on the bootleg album Charlie Christian At Minton's. Later a sixth track (Down On Teddy's Hill) surfaced and was issued on CD with the five existing tunes.
Sixty eight years later, these recordings sound totally modern. He hear the ideas that would later surface in be bop in their musical infancy, but don't let that scare you, this is jazz that's fun to listen to.
I love the way Christian, given the space to stretch out (which he never had with Goodman) uses repetition of short phrases at the beginning of his solos to build the tension before letting loose on the longer passages. I love the vibe of these recordings, the way his guitar cuts through the late night din, you almost feel like you're there at Mintons at 5 AM, you can almost hear the cigarette smoke.
Listen to Swing To Bop, Christian's most extended recorded workout, Goodman never let him explore like he does here, it might just be the peak of his short career. Or his swinging Stompin' At The Savoy. The other tracks-- Up On Teddy's Hill, Guy's Got To Go, and Lip Flips
show us a side of Christian that was only hinted at in most of his recordings with Goodman.
I love everything about this album, it never grows old.
As far as his other recordings go, they're all worth hearing, like Bird and very few others, every note Charlie Christian ever played is worth a listen. On the Goodman studio sides his solos are usually limited to four bars, which is quite frustrating, but a few fragments survive where he can be heard stretching out, of these non-commercial recordings my favorite is this short impromptu jam-- Blues In B which was played for the radio engineer so he could get his mike levels straight. Here Christian plays his ass off, not having to worry about incurring Goodman's "withering glare". I also include his blazing solo recorded with Goodman's big band, at the Hollywood Bowl on this version of Flying Home, Christian drives the whole band. Another great moment is this live aircheck of Solo Flight (Chonk Charlie Chonk), another example of just how advanced the man was.
At one point, in '41 Goodman decided he would give up his big band and form a group with Count Basie, using Basie's rhythm section-- Joe Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass) and Freddie Green (rhythm guitar), along with Lester Young on tenor sax and Buck Clayton on trumpet. A great idea, especially if Goodman fired himself! The group lasted one rehearsal, part of which was taped. Here are two examples-- Lester's Dream and Charlie's Dream from said rehearsal. It's almost as if Goodman does his best (or worst) to keep Christian and Young from exchanging ideas, even cutting off Christian's solo in Charlie's Dream just as he gets warmed up. Despite Goodman's inexplicable inability to let this band this band really swing. we hear two of the greatest soloists in jazz history backed by one of the greatest rhythm sections of all time.
Would have, should have, could have, it's the story of life....
We'll never know how far Charlie Christian would have gone musically, but these late night recordings are his best, and for my money among the most essential jazz recordings ever made.
They were never issued legitimately, and to this day remain available only as a bootleg. Had he lived, lord knows what Charlie Christian would have sounded like in the ensuing decades, but I'd bet he would have been using distortion and feedback by the fifties. The Mintons tapes show him already using sustain and the amplifier's harmonic and sonic overtones, something it took other jazz guitar players years to come around to.
It's a rainy Sunday afternoon, a perfect day to lay around and listen to the same record over and over again, and I can't think of a better jazz record for such a purpose than Charlie Christian Live At Minton's. It's a like having a table in a smoky club at be-bop's inception anytime you feel like it. I guess this is my deluxe version, with those last four cuts thrown in. My present to you readers who don't already have a copy.
Benny Goodman fans, please hold the hate mail. I tried to like him, but compared to Charlie Christian he sounds constipated. Just my opinion, which are like assholes....

15 comments:

Wow. Thanks! Funny timing on this one. A couple of weeks ago I picked up a great book at an estate sale: "Hear Me Talkin' to Ya" by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff. (published in 1955) It's a book of first hand interviews with jazz musicians telling the story of jazz from the earliest days in New Orleans to the development of be-bop in the 40's. Last night I was reading stories about the jam sessions at Minton's. Great to hear some actual recordings from that era!

Great post, i'm looking forward to listening to this when my internet hurrys up!

On a completely different topic, I am trying to find a good quality copy of 'I Don't Like You That Much' by the Royal Jokers! You used to play it a fair bit on your show. Do you know if it appeared on any compilations? The 45 doesn't seem easy to find and I imagine it costs a bomb.

Also, if your ever in Sydney, Australia, please come down to my night. You have been a big inspiration, I even flirted with callin' it Soul Caboose at one stage!

" I am trying to find a good quality copy of 'I Don't Like You That Much' by the Royal Jokers! "

It's on a compilation called Jook Block Busters Vol. 1(Valmor) which came out on vinyl in the 80's and CDin the 90's, it was in the Norton mail order catolog last time I looked (www.nortonrecords.com).

Hey Jim,Thanks for this. I was just checking out the Charlie Christian Box-Set over at Jeremy and Laura's the other night to see if it had these recordings on it, and was surprised to see it didn't. I have a bootleg (?) LP from the 70's with a generic red cover, with these tunes and some seemingly random titles given to them i.e "Kerouac." I'll have to dig it out and give it a spin.

Great post . My computer is so crap I couldn't play the tracks , but someone has posted a couple on youtube . Then to my amazement I found four different versions of the cd on Amazon , so a copy is on it's way to my house right now . All the best from Bromsgrove , UK....

Hold down the alt/option key while highlighting it and it will download to itunes (on a mac, I never tried on a PC), or try highlighting it while holding command key, a box will appear and choose "download link".

Man. This is too weird. I followed up on your advice about the Royal Jokers track on Jook Block Busters and ordered it from Crypt Records. It just arrived then and I put it on and it was a completely different track. The comps nice anyway, some classic stuff I didn't have on vinyl.

The track I actually wanted to get a hold of was this one; http://mac.easthouston.net/thehound/19880604/mp3s/start37.mp3which is listed on the June 4th 1988 show as Royal Jokers - I Don't Like You That Much. Anyway, I don't know what it is called and it's a great track! Any chance you know what it is and whether it appears on any comps.

James "The Hound" Marshall

James "The Hound" Marshall is a former WFMU deejay (1985-97), music writer and bar owner (Lakeside Lounge NYC, Circle Bar, New Orleans). He has contributed articles to dozens of mags and newspapers including the Village Voice, NY Times, LA Weekly, Spin, Penthouse Forum, New York Rocker, Newark Star-Ledger, East Village Eye, High Times (columnist for ten years), Kicks, and worse.
He also wrote liner notes to CD re-issues by Larry Williams and Johnny Guitar Watson, Ray Price, Eric Ambel, Challenge Records,The Okeh R&B Box, and others as well as compiling three volumes of the early rock'n'roll compilations Jook Block Busters (Valmor). At age 17 he edited two issues of the punk fanzine New Order (1977) He was born in Paterson, N.J. and raised mostly in Broward County, Florida, moving to New York City at age 18 in 1977 and has resided there ever since except for 1998-2002 when he split his time between New York and New Orleans. He has been acclaimed in print in the New York Times, Village Voice, Time Out New York, New York Magazine,The Manhattan Catalogue, and other publications you wouldn't be caught dead reading.